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Thursday, 12 March 2015

Procurement and Professional Career

A
job for life is something that many people find quite scary, especially in a
modern world that is characterized by freedom of movement and job flexibility.
But can a career in purchasing really be a job for life?

Purchasing
is also a place where your network, both internally and externally, makes a big
difference in your ability to succeed. I’m always excited when I see team
members moving to other roles in other functions because I know that what they've learned in purchasing will stay with them for the rest of their careers
and make them a great advocate of the function. Beyond being a great place for
people to learn and develop, the success of the function is also making it more
of a draw to people and means that it is much stickier in terms of keeping them
in.

That
does, however, put pressure on us as purchasing leaders to better explain the
important role of the function, both in our companies and externally. We need
to highlight the different career paths people can take within purchasing and
how that will help them develop. It ultimately comes down to us to make the
function an exciting place to be doing business and developing the skills
necessary to make a great career. Learning to be good with financial numbers,
negotiating effectively, influencing people and working closely with
engineering and manufacturing are all essential in purchasing and are easily
transferable into that are sought after elsewhere in the business. It is also a
place where people can evolve. You can rotate into and manage different
commodities, build up general management skills and also get closer to
engineering projects and product development.

After
having held so many different positions since, I would definitely say that
purchasing can be a job for life. Purchasing offers diversity in day-to-day
activities where you can get involved with commodity negotiations, new
transformation projects, cost-out engineering, direct spend, indirect spend, as
well as posing opportunities to work abroad. It combines that with being a
function that touches almost every area of the business, making it both an
exciting area of work and one that is central to success.